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Best Korea and Dear Leader's Howitzers

Posts

At least we stopped forgetting what snipers are for every time peace was declared. For the longest time, every conflict started off all, "It's not honorable to shoot someone if they can't see you.:x" and ended up, "Holy balls, war is hard!D: Maybe we should train some snipers..."

I read about this in a book on the history of snipers. It just kept happening. "Okay guys, war over, time to dismantle the school". I was baffled.

As for Best Korea, the situation is truly depressing in that there essentially is no good answer to it. Something is going to have to be done one day, but the sabre rattling, loss of life and humanitarian debacles that occur in the meantime are likely unavoidable and only going to get worse.

At least we stopped forgetting what snipers are for every time peace was declared. For the longest time, every conflict started off all, "It's not honorable to shoot someone if they can't see you.:x" and ended up, "Holy balls, war is hard!D: Maybe we should train some snipers..."

I read about this in a book on the history of snipers. It just kept happening. "Okay guys, war over, time to dismantle the school". I was baffled.

If I were King of the Military, I could see not wanting a bunch of highly trained snipers running around after the ink on the peace treaty has started to dry. What's Joe Sniper going to do next with his unique set of skills? Mercenary? Sounds dangerous.

At least we stopped forgetting what snipers are for every time peace was declared. For the longest time, every conflict started off all, "It's not honorable to shoot someone if they can't see you.:x" and ended up, "Holy balls, war is hard!D: Maybe we should train some snipers..."

I read about this in a book on the history of snipers. It just kept happening. "Okay guys, war over, time to dismantle the school". I was baffled.

If I were King of the Military, I could see not wanting a bunch of highly trained snipers running around after the ink on the peace treaty has started to dry. What's Joe Sniper going to do next with his unique set of skills?

At least we stopped forgetting what snipers are for every time peace was declared. For the longest time, every conflict started off all, "It's not honorable to shoot someone if they can't see you.:x" and ended up, "Holy balls, war is hard!D: Maybe we should train some snipers..."

I read about this in a book on the history of snipers. It just kept happening. "Okay guys, war over, time to dismantle the school". I was baffled.

If I were King of the Military, I could see not wanting a bunch of highly trained snipers running around after the ink on the peace treaty has started to dry. What's Joe Sniper going to do next with his unique set of skills? Mercenary? Sounds dangerous.

Because humanity has such a rich history of extremely long periods of peace?

And it's not like these countries completely dismantled their entire military, just the sniper schools. Snipers are just specially trained soldiers, what do you do with the rest of the soldiers after the ink on the peace treaty has started to dry? You find them other jobs.

Israel's military, in my opinion, is probably the most terrifying. If not from actual combat, but from the idea that they are landlocked by people who probably wish to kill them. I imagine their training is much more serious than our death by powerpoint, and in the harder parts of the military they've been known to kill each other... as in, not an accident.

I can't recall ever talking to a Combat Arms Army Soldier that sits in a classroom for "Death by power point" in regarding how to kill someone on a battlefield.

In that situation, plus the fact they aren't a third world country with crappy MIG jets in their air force (They have the F35... and while its no F22, it's an extremely effective war implement), their special forces are damn near second to none, and their pilots are arguably the most skilled in the entire world.

Since when do they have a plane that hasn't even been mass produced yet?

Because it wrecks one country in order to bring a bit more to another?

I'd love to hear what kind of economy would be possible out of that mess. Let's stay SK gets NK and all goes well, whats the best case scenario? How long before SK is third world-broke and how long to recover? Anybody got an idea?

So it would essentially be the nation of South Korea taking on the entire North Korean people and infrastructure. How is this not a dramatic improvement from the status quo?

That wouldn't be an improvement for the South Koreans.

The status quo involves the entire Korean peninsula. It would be an improvement for Koreans in general, and it would eliminate the persistent problem of the DPRK, which would be an ultimate improvement for South Koreans.

Because it wrecks one country in order to bring a bit more to another?

I'd love to hear what kind of economy would be possible out of that mess. Let's stay SK gets NK and all goes well, whats the best case scenario? How long before SK is third world-broke and how long to recover? Anybody got an idea?

What do you mean it "wrecks one country"? In what way would South Korea be "wrecked"? What would prevent South Korea from developing North Korea into a decent economy?

Because it wrecks one country in order to bring a bit more to another?

I'd love to hear what kind of economy would be possible out of that mess. Let's stay SK gets NK and all goes well, whats the best case scenario? How long before SK is third world-broke and how long to recover? Anybody got an idea?

What do you mean it "wrecks one country"? In what way would South Korea be "wrecked"? What would prevent South Korea from developing North Korea into a decent economy?

Nothing would stop them developing it into a decent economy, over a period of a couple of decades. Until then, food and medicine aren't free, and they're going to need a whole bunch of both.

I just think you're not understanding the scales involved here. South Korea would be almost doubling its population overnight, except the new half have no meaningful skills or education, and likely no jobs either once the current regime collapses.

Because it wrecks one country in order to bring a bit more to another?

I'd love to hear what kind of economy would be possible out of that mess. Let's stay SK gets NK and all goes well, whats the best case scenario? How long before SK is third world-broke and how long to recover? Anybody got an idea?

What do you mean it "wrecks one country"? In what way would South Korea be "wrecked"? What would prevent South Korea from developing North Korea into a decent economy?

The massive amount of funds that would take, are you not reading?

I think we are all actually saying the same thing. We are just thinking in different timescales.

MGS is saying that it would cause short-term stress and damage to the SK economy. I doubt that anybody disputes this.

Loren is saying yes, but after that you should be able to use North Korea as a viable economic area that actually produces GDP instead of sucking the life out of everything in the region. Loren is thinking long term.

These are both accurate thoughts.

Its just that short term is really gonna suck and long term is gonna take at least 3-5 decades. Minimum. We might be talking a century or more to get NK to productive levels. To make NK into an economic power like SK, it might be longer than that.

Unified powerful Korea also scares the Chinese. (The Chinese are kind of disturbed by the idea of anybody being powerful but them. Its not really an isolated thing though, we are scared by anybody else being powerful as well (we meaning America, for those international posters).

If North Korea were folded into the south, the bulk of the global economic power would help shoulder the burden to SK (including China) to avoid the alternative, which would be really bad for everyone short term

This would probably mean everyone who isn't already in debt giving SK a bunch of ultra long term loans to modernize the north

Because it wrecks one country in order to bring a bit more to another?

I'd love to hear what kind of economy would be possible out of that mess. Let's stay SK gets NK and all goes well, whats the best case scenario? How long before SK is third world-broke and how long to recover? Anybody got an idea?

What do you mean it "wrecks one country"? In what way would South Korea be "wrecked"? What would prevent South Korea from developing North Korea into a decent economy?

The massive amount of funds that would take, are you not reading?

So nothing is free. So what? The government spends a ton of money to stabilize the country, maybe takes out huge loans or whatever, then works on development, pays it all back later with a country that's twice as alrge and populous as before, without having a crazy nukey dictator to the north. They could probably even/would have an excuse to stop conscripting men at that point.

I'm not saying that it would be a cakewalk, but while takeover and development aren't easy, they're difficult roads to almost certain improvement to the status quo.

Because it wrecks one country in order to bring a bit more to another?

I'd love to hear what kind of economy would be possible out of that mess. Let's stay SK gets NK and all goes well, whats the best case scenario? How long before SK is third world-broke and how long to recover? Anybody got an idea?

What do you mean it "wrecks one country"? In what way would South Korea be "wrecked"? What would prevent South Korea from developing North Korea into a decent economy?

The massive amount of funds that would take, are you not reading?

It's not like North Koreans are just sitting there doing nothing in the meantime, though. Lots of labor, and new markets for South Korean companies specializing in basic products (because most North Koreans do earn money). In addition, NK has very substantial natural resources and reasonably good industry in place. It would be really hard but South Korea wouldn't be destroyed. Or go broke.

Obviously if this unification happened through war, that would make it even harder, but South Korea has experience in lifting countries out of the crapper. Only couple of decades ago it was itself in as shitty condition as North Korea was, had gone through war, and back then it did not have the twelth largest economy helping it out in the process.

Its just that short term is really gonna suck and long term is gonna take at least 3-5 decades. Minimum. We might be talking a century or more to get NK to productive levels. To make NK into an economic power like SK, it might be longer than that.

Why do you say it's going to take so long? South Korea developed on its own from being, IIRC, the poorest country in the world with an infrastructure shattered by war to being a developed country in about 35 years, all the while dealing with the North (with US assistance). If the south had a direct hand in improving the north without having to seriously worry about invasion, I don't see why the process wouldn't be even smoother.

This is assuming the North even needs to be monetized overnight. Setting up a sustainable living situation for the population of the north would be cheaper than the economic damage a single weeks' war would though, so it's important to remember scale here.

Really the only peaceful way out of this is in the Chinese and North Korean courts, the US and SK can't really do a whole hell of a lot. It should be blatantly apparent by now that "shows of strength" and dick waving will absolutely not do it

Because it wrecks one country in order to bring a bit more to another?

I'd love to hear what kind of economy would be possible out of that mess. Let's stay SK gets NK and all goes well, whats the best case scenario? How long before SK is third world-broke and how long to recover? Anybody got an idea?

What do you mean it "wrecks one country"? In what way would South Korea be "wrecked"? What would prevent South Korea from developing North Korea into a decent economy?

The massive amount of funds that would take, are you not reading?

So nothing is free. So what? The government spends a ton of money to stabilize the country, maybe takes out huge loans or whatever, then works on development, pays it all back later with a country that's twice as alrge and populous as before, without having a crazy nukey dictator to the north. They could probably even/would have an excuse to stop conscripting men at that point.

I'm not saying that it would be a cakewalk, but while takeover and development aren't easy, they're difficult roads to almost certain improvement to the status quo.

I don't think its a good idea during a worldwide recession. Countries are having to strip their own social programs to keep the ship afloat.

I don't know if the international community has the will or funds to loan the kind of money needed.

Its just that short term is really gonna suck and long term is gonna take at least 3-5 decades. Minimum. We might be talking a century or more to get NK to productive levels. To make NK into an economic power like SK, it might be longer than that.

Why do you say it's going to take so long? South Korea developed on its own from being, IIRC, the poorest country in the world with an infrastructure shattered by war to being a developed country in about 35 years, all the while dealing with the North (with US assistance). If the south had a direct hand in improving the north without having to seriously worry about invasion, I don't see why the process wouldn't be even smoother.

Look at the success China has had in the past 30 years, too.

With China, remember the 70 years before the 30 years (I'd say from the Boxer Rebellion on). Modernization was painful.

And China was in a better place than North Korea. South Korea too.

North Korea has been run into the ground. They went backwards from the 1950's. Yeah they have an army, but an economy that produces anything else?. They are not even basic food sufficient. We are working with fucking scratch here. Worse than scratch. A bunch of people with no modern skills, who are not prepared to think for themselves, who are starving to death, in an infrastructure that makes Fallout look like a step up.

Its a big mess. And remember that every year you spend cleaning up that big mess, the rest of the world takes a step up. So playing catchup gets harder. Especially as the rate of technological change increases.

Its just that short term is really gonna suck and long term is gonna take at least 3-5 decades. Minimum. We might be talking a century or more to get NK to productive levels. To make NK into an economic power like SK, it might be longer than that.

Why do you say it's going to take so long? South Korea developed on its own from being, IIRC, the poorest country in the world with an infrastructure shattered by war to being a developed country in about 35 years, all the while dealing with the North (with US assistance). If the south had a direct hand in improving the north without having to seriously worry about invasion, I don't see why the process wouldn't be even smoother.

Look at the success China has had in the past 30 years, too.

With China, remember the 70 years before the 30 years (I'd say from the Boxer Rebellion on). Modernization was painful.

And China was in a better place than North Korea. South Korea too.

North Korea has been run into the ground. They went backwards from the 1950's. Yeah they have an army, but an economy that produces anything else?. They are not even basic food sufficient. We are working with fucking scratch here. Worse than scratch. A bunch of people with no modern skills, who are not prepared to think for themselves, who are starving to death, in an infrastructure that makes Fallout look like a step up.

Its a big mess. And remember that every year you spend cleaning up that big mess, the rest of the world takes a step up. So playing catchup gets harder. Especially as the rate of technological change increases.

I strongly disagree with this statement. While it would take NK at least 20 years before an up-to-date educated populace could develop, every technological change generally makes playing catch-up easier. Our technology is generally focussed on making living easier, and thus cheaper: catching up NK thus requires a large injection of funds initially to restart it, but from that point on it can accelerate through what took the rest of the world a lot longer to do.

We're not dealing with a completely uneducated population remember. By and large we're dealing with a population who know you have to work fucking hard just to survive. These people currently pay state industry's for the benefit of not working so they can survive. They may not have up to date educations, but NK just needs the opportunity to actually work in the labor industry's at first.

Take that skillbase, and introduce it to modern farming technology, buy out the NK state industry's and get them making things for SK, and the country suddenly starts looking like it's in a much better state.

I mean - 30 years ago we'd have to actually wait for communications technology to catch up. We have the technology today to rollout a cellphone network for about $10k per base station, and have trouble disposing of the huge numbers of completely functional handsets we throw out each year. We could probably have cellphone coverage across all of NK inside of a year if we wanted to, and start networking the populace up to make a modern economy possible.

Its just that short term is really gonna suck and long term is gonna take at least 3-5 decades. Minimum. We might be talking a century or more to get NK to productive levels. To make NK into an economic power like SK, it might be longer than that.

Why do you say it's going to take so long? South Korea developed on its own from being, IIRC, the poorest country in the world with an infrastructure shattered by war to being a developed country in about 35 years, all the while dealing with the North (with US assistance). If the south had a direct hand in improving the north without having to seriously worry about invasion, I don't see why the process wouldn't be even smoother.

Look at the success China has had in the past 30 years, too.

With China, remember the 70 years before the 30 years (I'd say from the Boxer Rebellion on). Modernization was painful.

And China was in a better place than North Korea. South Korea too.

North Korea has been run into the ground. They went backwards from the 1950's. Yeah they have an army, but an economy that produces anything else?. They are not even basic food sufficient. We are working with fucking scratch here. Worse than scratch. A bunch of people with no modern skills, who are not prepared to think for themselves, who are starving to death, in an infrastructure that makes Fallout look like a step up.

Its a big mess. And remember that every year you spend cleaning up that big mess, the rest of the world takes a step up. So playing catchup gets harder. Especially as the rate of technological change increases.

Actually, post revolution, China basically starved the hell out of its population and paid its people in dirt. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolutions were two exercises in destroying and uprooting everything and killing millions of people.

I'd say North Korea is actually in a much better place than China was, but I suppose that's debatable. I don't see any kind of a good case that it's particularly worse than China circa 1978 though in terms of what it's like on the inside. In addition, it benefits from its location in the world and its geography. It's also a much smaller project than China's billion plus people.

Its just that short term is really gonna suck and long term is gonna take at least 3-5 decades. Minimum. We might be talking a century or more to get NK to productive levels. To make NK into an economic power like SK, it might be longer than that.

Why do you say it's going to take so long? South Korea developed on its own from being, IIRC, the poorest country in the world with an infrastructure shattered by war to being a developed country in about 35 years, all the while dealing with the North (with US assistance). If the south had a direct hand in improving the north without having to seriously worry about invasion, I don't see why the process wouldn't be even smoother.

Look at the success China has had in the past 30 years, too.

With China, remember the 70 years before the 30 years (I'd say from the Boxer Rebellion on). Modernization was painful.

And China was in a better place than North Korea. South Korea too.

North Korea has been run into the ground. They went backwards from the 1950's. Yeah they have an army, but an economy that produces anything else?. They are not even basic food sufficient. We are working with fucking scratch here. Worse than scratch. A bunch of people with no modern skills, who are not prepared to think for themselves, who are starving to death, in an infrastructure that makes Fallout look like a step up.

Its a big mess. And remember that every year you spend cleaning up that big mess, the rest of the world takes a step up. So playing catchup gets harder. Especially as the rate of technological change increases.

I strongly disagree with this statement. While it would take NK at least 20 years before an up-to-date educated populace could develop, every technological change generally makes playing catch-up easier. Our technology is generally focussed on making living easier, and thus cheaper: catching up NK thus requires a large injection of funds initially to restart it, but from that point on it can accelerate through what took the rest of the world a lot longer to do.

We're not dealing with a completely uneducated population remember. By and large we're dealing with a population who know you have to work fucking hard just to survive. These people currently pay state industry's for the benefit of not working so they can survive. They may not have up to date educations, but NK just needs the opportunity to actually work in the labor industry's at first.

Take that skillbase, and introduce it to modern farming technology, buy out the NK state industry's and get them making things for SK, and the country suddenly starts looking like it's in a much better state.

I mean - 30 years ago we'd have to actually wait for communications technology to catch up. We have the technology today to rollout a cellphone network for about $10k per base station, and have trouble disposing of the huge numbers of completely functional handsets we throw out each year. We could probably have cellphone coverage across all of NK inside of a year if we wanted to, and start networking the populace up to make a modern economy possible.

But the thing is, you need an infrastructure to educate the people you need to educate the people who will educate that up-to-date educated populace. We are talking a real revamp. So its not just the 20 years to grow the new generation. Its maybe a decade before that to setup the infrastructure. And importing the experts. Yes, North Korea does have some experts in modern technology, but not nearly enough to serve as the basis of an educational system. Gonna be 30-40 years ( this is including the the 20) before those kids are full on experts, ready to teach the next generation.

Still, you have a point. Probably not a century to turn around NK. Definitely multi-generational though.

And its a lot of money, that at the moment nobody's willing to lend.

I mean who's going to flip a property like North Korea. Its a definite handyman's dream.

I've gotta concede to your examples Loren. Somehow I completely neglected that SK wasn't a beacon of hope at the start, and it worked itself out of a bad situation. Those are good precedents for similar situations you've brought up with China and SK.

I was never suggesting it was impossible for united Korea to fix itself, though. I meant that it'd be really difficult. I can't imagine much more difficult, but I'm not particularly versed in... anything, really. I just think of NK's situation and I pretty much go "huh" thinking about the funds, programs and structure required to beef it up. My understanding being that it doesn't really have any of those.

Alternatively, you are suggesting that they have mastered time travel and are bringing in equipments from the future.

They're ramping up facilities as we speak, and there are over a dozen in flight testing right now.

It's not like they aren't going into full scale production in 2035. They'll be fielded and produced at the rate of one per day by 2016, given to our own forces by 2014, which in high-grade military equipment terms is really just around the corner.

So nothing is free. So what? The government spends a ton of money to stabilize the country, maybe takes out huge loans or whatever, then works on development, pays it all back later with a country that's twice as alrge and populous as before, without having a crazy nukey dictator to the north. They could probably even/would have an excuse to stop conscripting men at that point.

I'm not saying that it would be a cakewalk, but while takeover and development aren't easy, they're difficult roads to almost certain improvement to the status quo.

"Spends a ton of money?" Have you any idea how much money that would be? To spend that mony would bankrupt South Korea. It doesn't have enough money to stabilise North Kroea by itself. It probably doesn't even have it with mass international support. Take out massive loans? Yeah, again, the sheer amount needed is incredible, the country's debt would skyrocket.

OK, so you re-unify North and South Korea into one country. Now a third of your population is distinctly malnourished with in all likelihood educations which are in the case of history etc likely massively skewed and in the case of engineering and sciences also quite possibly far behind the profesionals in the South. Even without that problem these people have no money. Assuming that the South survives relatively intact you are going to see mass population movement from the North to the South as Northerners desperate seek the higher wages and living standards available down there.

Unfortunately this massive influx will in all likelihood put massive strain on the South infrastructure, cause wide scale unemployment and probably result in the creation of an underclass made of ex NK citizens, something which would be very bad. Now what you want to do as a government is pour money into re-education and the building of infrastructure in the North, which will result in Northerners being able to support the economy from their end. But as i said the costs of this, even with foreign aid, will be truly astronomical.

As this is all after the initial problem of establishing government in the North and starting to try and take care of millions of starving people. The North Korean government is highly involved in it's citizens lives and there is no alternate to that involvement right now. SK will have to take that place as well as trying to deal with the basic issues such as power, food etc. The SK government will also be having to deal with people who will find the SK way to running the show completely different to what they are used to. In all likelihood American troops will be in the street of North Korea, something which will be very, very strange to the North Koreans and might cause outbreaks of Anti-West insurgency (and SK can't not accept that US' help, because they really do need it).

West and East Germany re-unifying was crippling to the West German economy. And the difference between West and East Germany is not nearly the same as North and South Korea. In some areas in North Korea they don't even have electricity. The war is in many ways not what governments are afraid of, it's dealing with the aftermath which will be the bigger problem. Because of South Korea collapses trying to stabilise the North that wouldn't help anyone.

Although that's a graph without any sources listed from wikipedia, so grain of salt the size of Kim Jong-Il's ego.

Looks about right. South Korea's economic explosion started around the time that graph ends.

But it shows NK levelling off far more dramatically than SK exploding. The only thing I can see that coincides with that is Kim Il-Sung no longer being premier in 1972, but he still had all the power so I dunno what the deal is. Ideas?

Really NK needs a benevolent dictator. If you could get someone in there who decided they were going to emulate China's modernization, then hey - problem fucking solved. You can't ignore a massive consumer market that's just next door.